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Saturday, April 14, 2012

Owies

So about two weeks ago we had a major upset one afternoon. I started to blog about it, but never got past the post title, which was: "My fat lip and his goose egg." Essentially the story went like this: one afternoon while my friend was visiting, Max was sitting on my lap and did one of those two-year-old head butt things that pretty much ended with me trying to hold a conversation while holding an ice pack to my lip. Not even an hour later he was clambering around on the couch and took a flying leap off. I caught him...sort-of. While he didn't hit the floor, his forehead made an audible bonk on the end table.

(Just remember for a moment that at this point I have been a mother for all of...oh maybe 40 days).

After the bonk, Max freaked a bit. He wouldn't let me touch him, and cried for oh, maybe a minute. I was thinking, "Phew! That was close." Fast forward two minutes and he's sporting a big old goose egg. I've heard about these, but never seen one in real life. The thing stuck out almost half an inch from the middle of his forehead! It was terrifying. I wrangled him into letting me look at his pupils and my friend and I managed to mostly get an ice pack on him while putting on the TV. (He seemed fine at this point, and though I kept a close eye on him for the rest of the day, we barely even ended up with a bruise afterward).

But it was a bit of an eye-opener.

Max was in panic mode -- you could tell. He trusted no one to comfort him -- least of all me! -- and honestly he barely cried, considering. I know you are all thinking, "Wow, tough kid." And he is. But it's more than that. He never noticed when something hurt. Scraped hands? Not worth bothering about. Bonking your head on Mama's? Hysterically funny. The truth is that he had never quite learned to communicate when something hurt. And it is learned response when you think about it. Why throw a fuss if there's no guarantee that someone will pay attention to it?

So...I decided that Max needed to learn about owies.

Every time he did something that might have hurt, I exclaimed, "Owie!" and ran right over to give it a kiss. (This was not always a welcome response, by the way.) We played with Band-aids until he will occasionally even let me put one on his hand for all of 15 seconds.

Then last night he was a crazy man as he was going to bed. He was wearing a set on monkey pajamas and boy did he ever live up to them! Jumping on the bed, throwing pillows, you name it. And what do you know?

He bumped his head.

I said, "Owie!" and leaned over to kiss his head, even though he hadn't hit it very hard. He didn't pull away.

Then he did it again and I did the same.

The next time, as soon as he bumped his head he immediately stretched out for me to kiss it.

He did it twice more -- on purpose this time, I think, just to repeat the experiment. And of course I always kissed the owies and eventually my little monkey decided it was time to sleep.

Image Source: TheFasterTimes.com

I expect that he is suddenly going to find lots more owies, and that's ok. Because this time he can trust that I will be there to kiss them away.